I was wandering aimlessly around Pike Street Market in Seattle at about 3:30 on Saturday afternoon when my cellphone rang.
"Hi, this is Mark...what's up?"
A female voice, sounding a little flustered and confused, responded, "oh, ummm, hi, ahh, Mark. This is Danielle. I'm trying to reach Allison. But, unless you're her new lover or have stolen her cellphone, I think I must have the wrong number."
We spent a few seconds trying to sort out the confusion and eventually determined that she had dialed 9887 instead of 9778 and she apologized and started to hang up.
But she hesitated for a second and I said, "is anything wrong, Danielle?"
"No..." she said quietly, sounding slightly embarrassed. And then she just suddenly added, "it's just that, well, you have the most incredibly romantic and sensual voice. I've always loved men with deep voices."
I laughed and, right out of the blue, decided it would be fun to tease her so I dropped my voice a few octives lower and crooned, "thanks, Danielle. What's your most intimate and secret sexual desire and how can I make it come true?"
I expected her to gasp and hang up.
Which, of course, she immediately did as I chuckled to myself quietly and resumed my unguided tour through the fish market.
But about an hour later my cellphone rang again.
I answered it and this vaguely familiar female voice simply blurted out, "I've always wanted to have a man I didn't know give me a massage while I was completely naked and blindfolded."
And then she quickly hung up.
I walked around the streets of Seattle aimlessly for about the next twenty-two minutes with an erection that could trip a horse, muttering to myself, staring at the stupid cellphone and cursing the damn US West call-blocking feature.
About five o'clock in the evening the cellphone rang again.
A much more rational Danielle took a deep breath, apologized for what she had said earlier to me about her quirky massage fantasy, explained that she didn't know what had come over her and was highly embarrassed and asked me to forgive her since she didn't know me from Adam and she didn't want me to think that she was an incredibly rude person or a sex-crazed maniac.
I assumed that she had simply gone home and masturbated until she wasn't feeling as aroused as she was when she blurted out her fantasy to me and that now she was trying to make amends for her earlier indescretion. So I told her that I certainly understood, forgave her completely and then, when she was sufficiently off balance, changed stride suddenly on her by casually adding, "of course, I'd still be happy to make your secret little fantasy come true whenever you want."
Her reaction was simple.
She gasped "what!!??"
As dispassionately as it's possible to sound when you're about to explode, I explained that I'd always had the same fantasy. I'd always thought it would be fun to give a woman a massage under those exact circumstances, blindfolded, no conversation between us, everything she'd specified. Of course I was lying through my teeth to her because I'd never even thought of doing something like that but it did sound fun and, besides, the chances of it actually happening in this case were about five hundred gazillion to one so what the hell did I have to lose. I knew she'd never call my bluff even though, by now, we were clearly engaged in a game of Sexual Chicken that threatened to get gradually more serious.
But I'd misjudged her.
She raised my opening bet by giggling nervously and then taking a deep breath and asking coyly, "okay, Mister Smartypants, how would you go about it?"
I figured she was getting this brave because she knew she was still anonymous, so I said, "well, that depends on whether you live in a house or an apartment."
"A house. On Mercer Island."
"Well, then all you'd have to do," I whispered as seductively as possible, "is unlock your front door and put something yellow on it. That way, when I get there, I'll know that I'm at the right place. Then take off all your clothes, lay down on your bed and put on a blindfold. I'll walk in the door, lock it behind me, find the bedroom and without saying a thing give you a massage. It's just that simple."
There was sort of a stunned silence at her end for a few seconds.
Then I heard a few gasps and a very soft moan and she suddenly blurted out, "ohmygod, Mark, I'm so aroused that I'm actually thinking of doing this with you. There can't be any sex. No intercourse, no matter how wound up either one of us gets, okay? Oh, oh, ummm, that feels good. Unnn, unnnn. Umm, do you promise? No sex. And neither one of us can talk during the massage and you have to leave right after and we can never ever see each other ever again and that should be pretty easy for me since I'll have a blindfold on and never know what you look like anyway and, and, ummmm, but you have to promise...oh, oh, oh...ummm, no sex, okay? Absolutely no sex. Unnnnnn..."
I heard a few more gasps and then her voice just trailed off.
All negotiation, especially in sales, is a series of hurdles. One person sets up a hurdle ("it's too expensive") and the other person jumps over it ("but it will save you a lot of money in the long run").
Hurdle, jump, hurdle, jump.
This no sex thing was obviously her way of setting up a hurdle that was so great it would keep her from doing something she knew was a complete mistake and insanely dangerous. Because she'd read all the stories on Literotica she knew that the one immutable law of sex is that no man can give a naked woman a massage and not end up having intercourse with her. Especially if they're strangers. And, to complicate things even more, if the massage ever happened it would clearly be virtually impossible to muttle your way through it without talking, or at least screaming "oh, baby, oh, baby, oh, baby" or something like that five or six times. And, if that didn't completely shut the door on the whole idea, the final requirement about not seeing each other again certainly would. Of course they would see each other again. Or at least get married.
But, alas, now it was my turn to play.
"No problem. I do it all the time, Danielle, I touch naked women that I don't know all the time," I said with as much conviction and sincerity as I could muster. "That's what I do for a living, I'm a masseur. And if I ever accidentally run into one of those women on the street, I pretend not to know them. Besides, I'm good looking. I'm six six and handsome and I'm in perfect shape. I spend all day kayaking and mountain climbing and running through the forest with rabid dogs chasing at my heels. And I'm single. In fact, I'm so attractive and rugged and handsome that most of my female clients get so aroused when I'm giving them a massage that I have to leave the room while they masturbate. Almost all of them beg me to have intercourse with them. But I won't do it. I absolutely won't do it. And if you tried to turn a simple massage into intercourse, I'd leave your house immediately, too. So don't even think about it. I'm serious. If this is all a ruse so you can get me into bed, you're barking up the wrong tree."
Oh-oh.
I think that stunned her.
I know it sure stunned the hell out of me. Anyway, bye-bye hurdle. Of course, I just barely managed to get most of that diatribe out without choking on my tongue but this was definitely turning into an interesting conversation.